Murder in High Places

by Hugh Pentecost

  "This other man?" Hardy asked.

  "I didn't know him. I never saw him before."

  "Can you describe him?"

  Hilda shrugged. "He wasn't my type," she said. She looked at me and smiled. I got the message.

  "Do your best to describe him," Hardy said. His patience was giving out and his voice had a sharper edge to it.

  "Dark, suntanned, black hair sUcked down," Hilda said. "He was wearing black glasses. I—"

  Something like a jolt of electricity hit me. The man at the Trapeze Bar, the man Mitchell Prescott had asked about! I told Hardy and Chambrun I'd seen a man who fitted Hilda's description, that Mitchell Prescott had asked if I knew him.

  "This guy rang some kind of a bell with Prescott/* I said. "Thought he might have seen him in a mug shot somewhere. He got me to ask Eddie about him. He's been coming into the Trapeze the last few days, drinks alone, goes away.''

  "What time was it that you saw him?" Hardy asked.

  "I wasn't watching time," I said. "But it was quite a bit after five. Mrs. Haven and Jericho had come into the Trapeze. I'd had a drink with Martha Madden. Then Mitch Prescott flagged me and asked me about this creep at the bar. I talked to Eddie about him. Then came a message from you that I was wanted in your penthouse. That, I know, was about a quarter to six."

  "Was he there at five when Mrs. Haven and Jericho arrived?" Chambrun asked.

  "I don't know. I had no reason to notice until Prescott asked me about him. That must have been after five-thirty."

  "If he was there when they arrived at five and he was still there when Prescott asked you about him, he couldn't have been pushing Ballard around up here on ten at—would you say about ten after five, Miss Harding? It was five o'clock when you talked to Ballard in the lobby. You came up to your room, looked at your purchases from the boutique, heard the voices in the hall. Ten minutes? Fifteen at the most, would you say?"

  "No more than that," Hilda said.

  "So if this character was in the Trapeze at five, when Victoria and Jericho arrived, we can forget him,*' Chambrun said.

  "But if he showed up there after he'd poHshed off Ballard?" Hardy asked.

  "That makes for an interesting question," Chambrun said. '*He knew he was seen by Miss Harding pushing Ballard out into this service area. Why would he risk going down to the Trapeze—having committed a murder—and stand there drinking? Miss Harding might show up there and his goose would be cooked. The one sensible thing on earth for him to do was to get out of the hotel on the double."

  "Did you notice if this man with the black glasses was holding a gun on Ballard, Miss Harding?" Hardy asked.

  "They were moving with their backs to me toward this place when I called out to them," Hilda said. '* Ballard turned right around but this dark man just turned his head. I—couldn't see if he had a gun—I mean, I had no reason to look for one, you know."

  Hardy turned to me. *'Mark, you and Sergeant Cobb go down to the Trapeze. If this character is still there, I want him for questioning, and for Miss Harding to have a look at him. If he's gone, circulate. He could be somewhere else in the hotel—the grill, the dining room, the Spartan Bar. And if you see Mitch Prescott, tell him I want to talk to him. Maybe a murder will jog his memory about this guy."

  TWO

  Sergeant Joe Cobb was the uniformed cop who had brought Hilda Harding to the service area. He was right out of the book on what a good policeman should be: deadpan, humorless, and probably highly efficient or he wouldn't be working for Lieutenant Hardy.

  Cobb and I went down to the mezzanine and around the balcony that circles the main lobby to the rear entrance of the Trapeze. It was just about seven o'clock and the bar was buzzing. The normal piedinner crowd was there, and the news of a murder had somehow leaked and, I suspected, had gone through the Beaumont from top to bottom like a brushfire. I hadn't taken three steps into the place when I was surrounded by people with questions. The Beaumont's public relations genius was bound to have facts. I stalled them as best I could, promising that when there was something like a story to tell I would be available. My concern was for a dark, suntanned man wearing black glasses. He was no longer at the bar, or anywhere else in the Trapeze that I could see.

  The bar was three deep in customers and Eddie, along with two assistants, was, as my father used to say, *'busier than a one-armed paperhanger." I managed to get his attention and we went off into the little service pantry back of the bar.

  ''Jesus,'' he said to me, ''Bob Ballard! One of the nicest guys we had!"

  "Right now, Eddie, I'm interested in your one-drink friend with the black glasses," I said.

  "Friend? Oh, that one you asked about before. He's been gone a little while."

  "Hilda Harding has a room on the tenth floor," I told him. "She heard some people arguing out in the hall, went to look, and saw Bob with someone who could have been that guy. He pushed Bob into the service area where he was shot. That was maybe ten past five, quarter past. Do you remember when your friend first came into the bar?"

  "He's not my friend," Eddie said. "I don't even know who he is."

  "But you didn't notice when he came?"

  Eddie was drying his hands on his white apron. "Around five o'clock Queen Victoria and that artist guy made their entrance. As soon as I saw her I started making her the drink she always wants—white wine, soda, a twist of lanon. The waiter came over and said the guy with the red beard wanted an Irish whiskey on the rocks. You know how it is. I was watching her and that damn little dog. That mutt always has something snotty to say to me when she walks past. She was all smiles, and a 'hello' to me, like always. Other people crowded around and then I saw we had that columnist bitch for a customer."

  "'Martha Madden?"

  "Yeah. She has to be handled with kid gloves or there'll be some crack in her column about service in the Beaumont going downhill. Business always picks up when the queen arrives. I don't know how long it was, Mark—fifteen, twenty minutes, maybe even more—when I saw that queer with the black glasses standing at the bar. He hadn't signaled or anything; just waiting for me to notice him. Ordered his vodka and soda. Sometime after that you came over and asked about him. That sonofabitch can nurse one drink longer than anyone you ever saw. He didn't want to talk, so I let him alone. You left. I guess the boss had sent for you."

  'To tell me about Ballard," I said.

  "'Danm! Such a good guy."

  Sergeant Cobb got into the act. "So you don't know the exact time he came?"

  "It was after the queen arrived, which would be five or a little after," Eddie said. "I didn't have any reason to clock him, Sergeant. I was busy."

  "And you don't know exactly when he left?"

  "Hell, I don't know exactly," Eddie said. "I knew he wouldn't be wanting a second drink. I left him alone. Place filling up. The boss turned up and took the queen and the artist guy away with him."

  "Chambrun?"

  "There isn't any other boss around here. Sergeant. He didn't speak to me or ask me anything about this guy with the black glasses."

  "He didn't know about him then. But he knew about Ballard."

  "Well, we got it on the grapevine a little after that and then this place really started to cook."

  ''And the man with the black glasses was gone?" Cobb asked.

  Eddie shrugged. *'He was there for a while—like the last few days—and then he was gone. I wish I could tell you what you want to know. He was here sometime after five, gone sometime after six. It's the best I can do."

  "We may need you later," Cobb said. **A police artist may be trying to draw a picture of this man with the glasses."

  "You know where Mitch Prescott went?" I asked Eddie. "I don't see him out front."

  "He was here till a few minutes ago," Eddie said. "You might find him in the Grill. He usually has dinner there around seven o'clock when he's in town."

  "Don't go home till I tell you," Cobb said to Eddie. "When we get a police artist here we'll want you to spend
some time with him."

  Cobb and I went down to the Grill, which is on the lobby level. It is a small, intimate room, designed to look hke an old English chophouse, heavy beams, sporting prints, red-checked tablecloths. There are only about a dozen tables and you have to be in the good graces of Mr. Quiller, the captain, if you wanted a reservation there.

  I spotted Mitch Prescott right away, sitting at a comer table, his bald head shining in the light from the chandelier over his table. I wondered if he ate with his pipe in his mouth, but I saw it resting beside his fork and knife as he contemplated some raw clams on the half shell. The pipe was always where he could reach it. He saw me at once and waved. Cobb and I went over to him.

  "I hear you've got big trouble," Prescott said.

  I introduced Sergeant Cobb. '*The lieutenant in charge wants to talk to you," I said.

  "Me? Whyme?"

  I told him about Hilda Harding and what she'd seen. He brought his fist down on the table so hard the silverware bounced.

  ''Damn! I've been torturing myself trying to remember where I've seen that character before," he said.

  Chambrun and Lieutenant Hardy had moved out of the service area on ten with its gruesome trash can when Cobb and I returned with Mitch Prescott in tow. The housekeeper's little room on that floor had been turned into a temporary headquarters for the police.

  ''I take it our man wasn't there?" Hardy asked as we joined him and Chambrun.

  "Gone, and no exact times of his coming and going from anyone,'* Cobb reported. *'He arrived sometime after five and left sometime after six."

  "You'd think the bartender would know/' Hardy said.

  "Why should he?" Chambrun asked in that strange, flat voice I hadn't heard until today. I knew just one word was spinning around in his head, "Ruysdale, Ruysdale, Ruysdale." Almost a whole day had gone by and nothing more than that first call from the kidnappers. He was with a friend. Hardy, and another friend, Mitch Prescott, and he didn't dare tell them what was eating away at him. ''The bartender had no reason to keep tabs on time," he said.

  "Was it after Mark asked questions about the man, asked them for me?" Prescott said.

  "He doesn't remember times," Chambrun said, ''and you don't remember what interested you in this man. Or has your memory improved?"

  "It's the damndest thing," Prescott said. "I saw him standmg there at the bar and I started to say to mysdf, 'That's'—and I couldn't come up with it. Had I seen a mug shot of him? Had I seen him in a police lineup somewhere? It just doesn't come to me! You understand, I see thousands of mug shots and go to endless police lineups. I don't think this man was someone I was looking for, just someone I saw in connection with something else."

  "You don't deal with ordinary police cases, Mr. Prescott," Hardy said.

  ''Right. My concern is mainly with foreign visitors to this country," Prescott said. "Terrorists are everywhere, God help us. Anti-Jewish people, anti-Arab people, anti-American people, for God's sake. I look at the pictures of illegal aliens who are picked up, I look at them in police lineups and in detention centers. My particular job is to anticipate danger to people who come here to the United Nations, to Washington. Anyone with any kind of a record in terrorism or violence who shows up in this part of the world is brought to my attention. This man ..."

  ''Yes?" Hardy said.

  "I saw him somewhere. He obviously wasn't someone who concerned me at the time, or who he was and what he was suspected of would have stuck." He glanced at Chambrun. "You don't remember everyone who walks in and out the front door of your hotel, Pierre. Faces, faces, faces."

  "I might surprise you," Chambrun said, "because anyone who comes into this hotel is my business. I happen not to have seen this man, but if I had, I'd remember when, and where, and why he interested me."

  "In my case I have to learn to forget when someone doesn't concern me. But this one..." He made an almost comic gesture of pounding on his forehead with his fist. "It seems I've learned how to forget too well."

  *'I remember saying at the time that he looked like George Raft in an old Warner Brothers crime movie/' I said. **Could it just be an old movie that you can't remember?"

  Prescott gave me an odd look of surprise. "You know something, Mark? That just could be it! Every night of my life I go to bed, wound up hke an alarm clock, can't sleep, turn on the TV set, and watch late movies. This man could be an actor, someone I saw playing a heavy. I don't really follow those late films; they just help me to forget the real world so I can doze off. It could have been a movie, and I unconsciously associated this actor with crime."

  Chambrun turned away. *'That was no late movie Miss Harding saw in the corridor out there," he said. **It was ten to fifteen minutes past five in the afternoon, only a moment or two before Bob Ballard was shot three times in the head, apparently by someone who looks just like your 'actor' in the Trapeze. It would be helpful if you'd go back to trying to remember where you saw this man and why the sight of him triggered your personal alarm system."

  Td never seen a so-called police artist at work before. This guy, whose name I don't think I ever heard, was set up in Chambrun's plush office on the second floor. Prescott, Eddie, Hilda Harding, and I were brought there to help him. He looked almost like the cartoon concept of an artist: long hair, scraggly beard.

  T-shirt, blue jeans, sneakers. I understand the police had come across him in some holdup situation in an East Side bar. He drew a picture for them of the gunman who'd held up the owner, robbed the cash register, and taken off. After that the cops helped supplement his income by using him in cases like ours.

  He began with my notion of George Raft in an old crime movie. The artist remembered Raft in a snap-brim hat. Eddie said no hat.

  "Just slicked-down black hair, brushed straight back,'' Eddie said.

  "Bigger, broader shouldered,'' Prescott suggested. "He must weigh about two hundred pounds."

  We all agreed to that.

  "I—I only had a glimpse of his face," Hilda said. "But his mouth in that moment—turned down at the comers—cruel."

  The artist was quick, skillful, and in a few moments he had what I thought was an exact picture of the man I'd seen in the Trapeze. The others agreed. Hardy had a picture he could circulate.

  "If we catch up with him, I'll need you all again," the lieutenant said.

  Hilda, after an inviting little smile to me, left, along with Eddie.

  "You know someone in the State Etepartment named Martin Steams?" Chambran asked Mitch Prescott.

  "Sure," Prescott answered promptly. "Middle East expert.'

  "You have any idea where he would stay when he's in New York?" Chambrun asked.

  Prescott held a lighter to his pipe. He smiled at Chambrun after he got it going. '*! hate to say this to you, Pierre, but people do have favorite hotels that aren't the Beaumont. I don't know Steams well enough to tell you whether his is the Plaza or the Waldorf."

  Chambrun wasn't amused. '*He may have been the last passenger Ballard brought down from the roof— if he isn't that man." He pointed to the artist's drawing of the Trapeze drinker.

  ''Hell, no," Prescott said. ''Martin is smaller, slenderer, with prematurely white hair. Who was he visiting on the roof?"

  "Guest in Penthouse Three," Chambrun said.

  "Anyone I know?"

  There was the briefest hesitation before Chambrun answered.

  "Journalist named Larry Welch," he said.

  "That figures," Prescott said. "Welch has been doing a series of stories on the troubles in Lebanon and other places over there. That's Martin Stearns's world. I can tell you there's someone in Washington who'll know where Steams is every hour of every day of his life."

  "It could help," Chambmn said.

  "I could make the call for you, maybe save a step or two that way."

  "Ild be grateful." Chambrun said. He gestured toward the phone on his desk. *'Mark and I have things to do. I'll get back to you in a few minutes.'*

  I had no idea
what we had to do, but **mine not to reason why." I followed him out into the second-floor corridor and we headed toward the elevators.

  "Ive got to talk to Welch, try to reassure him that he's safe," Chambrun said. "If he doesn't already know what's happened to Bob Ballard, he will if he turns on his radio or his television set."

  "How can you convince him he's safe?" I asked. '"He isn't, is he?"

  "Jericho," Chambrun said, not looking at me.

  "You'll tell him Jericho is up there as a watchdog?"

  "If I have to."

  "But not the truth?"

  He whirled around to face me, the hanging judge. "How can I, Mark? But if I have to, to persuade him to sit tight, I will."

  Johnny Thacker was still running the roof car. One look at Chambrun and he knew enough not to ask him questions. I became his target.

  "I understand your girl friend actually saw Bob's killCT," he said to me. "Some fellow who's been hanging around the Trapeze for the last few days?"

  "She saw a man with Bob who fits that guy's description," I told him. '*You have any idea who he is, he stopped me in the lobby, three, four days ago, and asked me where the Traj)eze was located. Jerry Dodd's just been asking me. I didn't happen to notice him again, but I understand he's been coming in every day.''

  Chambrun spoke. ''Not today, though? You didn't see him come or go today?"

  "No. I didn't see him come—and I've been on this car since about five-thirty. I wouldn't have seen him go."

  "You haven't arranged for relief?" Chambrun asked.

  ''They finally located Lucky Lewis. He should be here any minute now. Mr. Dodd didn't want anybody on this car who hadn't operated the run before. Mike will take over for me if he gets here before Lucky." Mike Maggio is the night bell captain.

  "Please don't leave the hotel without checking in with me," Chambrun said. "And I want every routine of nmning this car to be as it always is; no dianges, no special things added. Tell Mike and Lucky that, whoever takes over for you. It's important, Johimy."

  "Ifs your ball game, Mr. Chambrun," Johnny said. "But-"